Author Topic: Coronavirus Outbreak  (Read 134669 times)

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I think you should go from this community. I think it's long overdue. You do not belong in this company.
The only reason he's still here is that a) he owns parts of the server infrastructure and b) like any true evangelist (both for his brand of protestantism and for Trump, the idol of Owning The Libs) he feels gratified by spreading the good word to the unbelievers, even if they are clearly having none of it.

Everyone knows that Goober has done a lot for this community. Let's keep FreeSpace and GenDisc separate.

 

Offline 666maslo666

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If you're allowed to go to the supermarket, you're allowed to go to church.  Man does not live on bread alone.

What a dumb comparison. You can live without church, you cannot live without food or other basic necessities. Coronavirus is a very valid reason to restrict religious gatherings. And as far as I am concerned, that is a very good litmus test that separates normal religous people from bat**** crazy religious extremists.

EDIT: That said, you do belong into this community and do not let anyone convince you otherwise. Political and world view disagreements are totally orthogonal and unimportant compared to our shared love of FreeSpace. That is why we are ultimately here, and I think everyone ought to be welcome here. Maybe even them commies
« Last Edit: April 14, 2020, 08:20:43 am by 666maslo666 »
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." - Leonardo da Vinci

Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.

 

Offline General Battuta

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If you thought corporate scabs were bad, just wait for the hot new thing: scabbing for a virus

 

Offline General Battuta

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Everyone knows that Goober has done a lot for this community. Let's keep FreeSpace and GenDisc separate.

My partner just went out to pick up a shipment of materials to make masks and gowns for nurses. To continue the Blitz analogy (since people are currently dying at a higher per capita rate than in the Blitz), my partner has gone out into a bombing raid to get medical supplies. The reason the bombs are falling is because of uniquely poor decisionmaking by those in power-Republicans, Democrats, local, federal, it doesn't matter.

Why should I ever want to share a community with someone who's rooting for the bombers?

EDIT: That said, you do belong into this community and do not let anyone convince you otherwise. Political and world view disagreements are totally orthogonal and unimportant compared to our shared love of FreeSpace. That is why we are ultimately here, and I think everyone ought to be welcome here. Maybe even them commies

My parents and loved ones are a lot more important to me than FreeSpace. Why would I ever want to share a community with someone who's calling for the infected to gather with the uninfected? Would you want to share your community with an arsonist's accomplice - the one who gathers hundreds of people in the building where the fire will be set?

Some things do matter more than video games.

 

Offline General Battuta

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There's probably something to be said about an ethics of 'no one should feel unwelcome, even if they have called for people to die.' It's very, very nerd.

 

Offline The E

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Political and world view disagreements are totally orthogonal and unimportant compared to our shared love of FreeSpace.

A decade ago, I might have agreed with you.

But now? When it is increasingly clear that this brand of politics we all lump up into the modern conservative package is a failure, its practitioners and preachers con men and criminals, its defenders little better, and it all results in literally thousands of people dying who didn't need to die, hundreds of thousands hospitalized who didn't need to be, millions job- and likely homeless who didn't need to be? When it can all be laid at the feet of the political trends that brought these neo-fascists to power? When this is but a taste of the upheavals and catastrophes to come when climate change turns the same corner that corona did and there's suddenly massive impacts all over the place that the people Goober and jr2 are so quick to defend will proclaim as "totally unexpected"?

No. Now, I'm going to say that I wouldn't want to be in a community that tolerates people like that. If you're so entrenched in your chosen ideology that, when asked for an opinion about a crisis like COVID, all you can muster is "I think people are being unfair to my chosen ideology and its figureheads", and you spend paragraphs upon paragraphs, quote chains stretching into eternity on desperately trying to come up with something, anything that would exonerate the leader or ideology you follow while spending only scattered words here and there on the actual suffering actual humans are going through... I don't know how you can come to think of yourself as moral then. Or, for that matter, christian.

Being apolitical, being neutral, is a luxury. It's a priviledge, and, more often than not, a sign of ignorance. We are not rich enough to be apolitical.
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Offline General Battuta

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In conclusion, I hope you have all given serious thought to the blessing and protection of Papa Nurgle, He Whose Effluents Ease the Pain of Rot.

 
if a forum relies on the notion of mutual respect, how do you deal with someone who has no respect for human life?

 

Offline Aesaar

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If you're allowed to go to the supermarket, you're allowed to go to church.  Man does not live on bread alone.

You can worship God at home.  He can hear you.

But it won't make the libs as angry.  And that is, of course, the paramount aim, is it not?

Propagating a pandemic to own the libs.

 
There's probably something to be said about an ethics of 'no one should feel unwelcome, even if they have called for people to die.' It's very, very nerd.

I might disagree in broad terms but when they're doing it unapologetically on the boards themselves I absolutely agree.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

  

Offline theperfectdrugsk

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I'll throw my .02 in here. I think a lot of folks in this thread are having a very hard time distinguishing between malicious intent and dangerous (even willful) ignorance. Giving other folks the benefit of the doubt, I tend to believe Goober et al. fall more into the latter category than the former. At least in this thread, there isn't a single instance where Goober has "called for people to die" (admittedly, I haven't been around long enough to know Goober or his beliefs outside this thread). Is he defending practices, policies and beliefs that are almost certainly going to result in people dying? Sure. But that's not the same thing.

If we can't talk to folks on the "other side" and try to see where they're coming from, we're pretty well ****ed as a society already. I'm only active in a few forums, but I appreciate having people whom I fundamentally disagree with in them, because it forces me to examine what I believe and why. I don't know about you all, but I'm not so fragile that I can't stomach someone disagreeing with me, even in the face of a crisis like COVID.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Calling back to the blitz analogy, having had family live through it and die in it in generations past, the thing with the the blitz was that it was easy to see and follow the straightforward directions of the Wardens and Marshalls to seek safety.  People knew that by doing what they were told that it would be best for everyone and lives would not be put at any more risk than minimally possible.

Thing with the virus, is that some people are too stubborn, stupid, ignorant, and downright fantastical in their disbelief that they are immune in themselves, or unable to propogate this thing.

Martial law here please.
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Offline General Battuta

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At least in this thread, there isn't a single instance where Goober has "called for people to die" (admittedly, I haven't been around long enough to know Goober or his beliefs outside this thread). Is he defending practices, policies and beliefs that are almost certainly going to result in people dying? Sure. But that's not the same thing.

He hasn't called for anyone to die. He's just asked us to crowd into a burning building. It's not the same thing. :thonking:

Quote
If we can't talk to folks on the "other side" and try to see where they're coming from, we're pretty well ****ed as a society already. I'm only active in a few forums, but I appreciate having people whom I fundamentally disagree with in them, because it forces me to examine what I believe and why. I don't know about you all, but I'm not so fragile that I can't stomach someone disagreeing with me, even in the face of a crisis like COVID.

There are times where an issue has two opposing stances and it's valuable to see both sides. This is not one of them. Nor are many other critical issues of our times. I was just thinking about this earlier, actually—how people mistake the existence of two sides for the existence of a 'truth in the middle.' It's South Park logic, both-sides-ism. The fetishism of 'balance.' Create a reasonable position and a conspiracy theory and there's always someone who insists on Teaching the Controversy, because simply shutting one side down as nonsense is emotionally difficult and causes fights.

Some questions simply have a right answer.

Classy move calling folks whose lives are in danger and who don't want to see more deaths 'fragile.' Might want to rethink that one. When your local government has to make a decision between containing COVID and, well, not containing COVID, I hope your immune system isn't so fragile that it can't stomach someone disagreeing with it.

 

Offline Aesaar

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I'll throw my .02 in here. I think a lot of folks in this thread are having a very hard time distinguishing between malicious intent and dangerous (even willful) ignorance. Giving other folks the benefit of the doubt, I tend to believe Goober et al. fall more into the latter category than the former. At least in this thread, there isn't a single instance where Goober has "called for people to die" (admittedly, I haven't been around long enough to know Goober or his beliefs outside this thread). Is he defending practices, policies and beliefs that are almost certainly going to result in people dying? Sure. But that's not the same thing.

Dangerous ignorance becomes malicious when one refuses to accept they're ignorant out of petty spite.

Quote
If we can't talk to folks on the "other side" and try to see where they're coming from, we're pretty well ****ed as a society already. I'm only active in a few forums, but I appreciate having people whom I fundamentally disagree with in them, because it forces me to examine what I believe and why. I don't know about you all, but I'm not so fragile that I can't stomach someone disagreeing with me, even in the face of a crisis like COVID.

The fault with this is that you assume the other side can be reached at all.  Some issue do not have two valid sides that both deserve consideration.

Some people are simply wrong.  It isn't fragility to dismiss their beliefs as such.

 

Offline karajorma

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To be honest I was tempted to move this to Political Discussions a while back. But then I started wondering why a thread about a virus that is affecting the entire planet should be a political issue. It really shouldn't need to be moved. The fact is that this isn't a political issue. Most of us are upset that the virus response is being handled badly. We don't care who did it. We just don't want it continued.

I'm not going to say that anyone should leave the community either. But I will say that if the only reason you are posting on an apolitical thread is political, you don't belong on this thread and you shouldn't post any further on it.
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Offline General Battuta

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Big moral decisions always look clearcut in retrospect—civil rights, suffrage, and entering WW2 are three examples that spring to mind—but when you're actually living through them, there are usually more people bemoaning the incivility, the mean words and personal animus and disunity, than there are people clearly taking the retrospectively right side.

It's the same on nerd internet forums! People value decorum and proper behavior much more than, for example, 'not calling for mass public gatherings in a time of pandemic.' And they value smooth interpersonal relationships much more than stances on large abstract issues, because, well, they're abstract.

We've got somewhere north of 7000 dead now, although everyone agrees this is probably an underestimate. It's mostly killing old men (though old women aren't far behind). My parents are in the high risk age bracket but seem to be pulling through, probably due to their disgustingly regular cardio exercise. They're far from NYC, in a tiny hamlet in the mountains, population 400. I think we're turning the corner here in the big city, but this thing can go strange places. Be careful.

 
In other news, the Trump campaign has helpfully provided a timeline of the administration's actions in response to the virus.

this timeline accurately shows that trump took no measures to curb the spread of the disease throughout all of February
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
It seems that most Americans approve of their governors' responses to the outbreak, and nearly half approve of Trump's response.

As alarming as these polls are, I doubt that nearly half of Americans are death cultists with no respect for human life. There are more charitable interpretations.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Just the ones calling for mass public gatherings and minimizing the botched the response so their chosen politicians won't look bad, friendo

 

Offline General Battuta

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Again this fixation on polls, statements, approval, disapproval, who thinks what about who: trying to construct a narrative out of what's happened. But all that is ultimately unimportant, because the inalterable Lacanian truth is the death count. It is large. It is bigger than it needed to be.

Something went wrong. I think it is fine to argue about what that is, and to disagree on who's to blame. I don't personally think Trump did a good job, but we have no hard indisputable evidence another President would have done better given the same circumstances. And the President is only one part of a large mechanism.

What I don't think is fine is denying or minimizing that something went wrong, and that thousands of people died as a result. You have to begin there to have any decency.